The main screen is looking better.. now has an actual button that you can click.  The HTML page got a snazzy header, FB like button and some other little tweaks (analytics etc)

Managed to get the web editor exporting tileframe data nicely, and with a few modifications was able to get TGB to import the new map data and render the maps in the existing tilemaps.  :-) yaay.

New tilemaps in Game Engine.

Now if I can only find out what makes it crash when you touch the mouse……

*scratch head*.. well at least it’s progress..

Oh and we have new and very awesome epic in-game music now from www.indiegraphics.net

So it’s  been a good week overall.

[Edit::]  Found the Crash.  it was to do with the checks for various player positions on the tilemap for shooting.  Which is totally obsolete, due to the new tilemap, so it was crashing.

Non-Gaming Goodness

So the summer deluge of freelance projects has slowed somewhat and a bunch of projects have gotten finished and I’ve got a nice body of work to start off in the professional portfolio side of things.  There’s just a couple websites to launch and tweak and then whatever new projects come this way… (with potentially a super super exciting project mixed in with it)

So that Gives me a few, precious, moments where I’m not playing with the cutest baby ever, to step away from the computer and rest my eyes on something that I’ve just realized that I miss.

Painting… so I still need to finish the oils, but I want to just crank out some pieces and make fast, bright vivid things and not have to worry about the whole setup and whatnot that the oils (even the water based ones) take.

So here’s a quick peek and the first of 4 24×24 canvases that I’ve got scattered across the kitchen/studio.

The colors are so vivid it totally blows out my camera’s color range.  I love it!

Gaming Goodness

So in few spare moments I’ve had where I can sit down and play something have been consumed by a couple games, Stalker : Call of Pripyat, Amnesia, Elemental and Reccetear.

I’m just going to ramble a few words and pictures about Stalker and Do a post later about the other 2.

So I’ve had it for a while but it somehow just got pushed back into the background since it came out along with the whole bunch of goodness that came out last year around the same time (Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age etc )

So when the chaps over at Rock Paper Shotgun mentioned some of the incredible user mods that have come about since its release.

And the results are pretty dang Spectacular.

Like this morning shot when the morning mists burn off and the rising sun lets you see into the distance.

Very pretty. And dynamic. And Massive.

And Full of Terrifying Wildlife.

But that’s ok.. you get guns.  That each have their own upgrade tree, so as the game progresses you get to tweak out your favorite guns with extra perks.

And when the sun sets, or you have to enter an old dark abandoned pumping station it delivers some of the most tense and jump worthy gameplay that’s been my pleasure to partake of in quite some time.

Super Productive Project Week is on!

So I’ve got the house to myself while GFW and Co. are out visiting grandma in Merkel.  Which means it’s a rare opportunity to listen to loud music till the odd hours of the night and work on All those things that I’ve been meaning to get done.

But, first things first.  Today was wrapping up some consulting for Kell. And also getting an awesome start on the Jones Communications website / CMS re-design.    After today I’ve got the element layout of the site in place so tomorrow I can focus on getting the content styling in place, and then gradually flesh out the pages and programmatic requirements of the site.

Additionally in order to further my adventures with water soluble oil paints, I’ve decided to start a second piece while working on the first.  Its a significantly larger size (14″x18″) But I’ve got plans for attempting something resembling a portrait… But the texture of the canvas in the first piece has become a hindrance so this new piece I’m starting out by layering many coats of gesso and then once dry, sand it back to a smoother surface.  Hopefully the texture will help my control of the paint. So tonight has been spent putting down 4 coats so far and hopefully one more before bedtime, and then allow it to dry fully overnight.

So the theory goes the remainder of the week will be a couple hours of website work, followed by some sheep illustrating  intermingled with breaks  on the paintings.    It might all be too much to do but hey.. its summer vacation and I can sleep in til 7:20 now

Just 62 more cards to finalize..

Here’s where things stand as of now:

Drawn 78 remaining 47 total cards: 125Painted 63 remaining 62 ready to paint 15Placed 63 remaining 62 ready to place 0Tested 1 remaining 124 Known Rev 3 remaining 122 Proof 0 remaining 125 Done 0 remaining 125

I feel I can blame it on the impending arrival of offspring and get on with it.

the Devil

Couple paintings are done and there’s now a nice angel and demon in 24×24″ panels in the front hall. You know.. to scare people away from the good art that covers the rest of the house.

So the current plans (subject to revision but hey I feel better when I can pretend life’s going according to some sort of plan) is to prep the baby room and get the 2 paintings finished in time for baby Jude to arrive.    Then it’s baby time and squeezing in the last touches on Mutant Sheep Eat The Planet! and get that finished out by Summer in addition to getting some more freelance work and getting Wenderflonia all set up and ready to take over the art world.

The entry to the kitchen

Wow time sure does fly, and whoa am I so totally not going to make the Oct 31 deadline! Which more or less means that November and December are going to be choked with Holidays and Family.

And it turns out there’s a little baby boy inbound, eta Feb 25(ish) (holy crap!)

So that has got to be more or less the last deadline, beacause somehow I don’t think there’s gonna be much free time after that for a while.

So, you might ask, what the hell have you been doing for the last 18 days.   Well, Mutant Sheep progress has been slow… much slower than I wanted but I seriously needed a break. More After the Break, Pictures too!So having been Marvelously inspired by Super GFW over at wenderflonia.com and watching her paint and get messy all over the kitchen.  I just had to have a go at it.

But First I had some WAY overdue paintings for Lil Niece Mia who was returning to the country  Oct 1.

So  after much obsessing and sketching I wound up with 2 11×18 canvases

So after that I was on a roll and Ready to slap some paint around.

First up was just a basic 2 hour blending exercise on a 8×11 canvasboard

I should go back and finish the background on it, maybe…

Then after that I had this wonderful 12 x 24 Museum canvas that I was dying to slap some paint on.

I wound up with a wood nymphy type critter lady.  (it looks better in real life the computer makes the color blanch a good bit)

Overall I’m happy with it. The atmospheric perspective  worked better than I had hoped and the Musculature shading works overall.   Compositionally though, it’s a bit eerie, her eye wound up dead center, which is kinda disquieting.

Overall I’m  happy with it, and plan on going back in a month or two and making a series of refining tweaks.  But I’m gonna not look at it for a while so to see it with fresh eyes.  I Have a 24×24 blank canvas sitting behind me right now.. It wants something red and firey on it..

But first

MUST WORK ON MUTANT SHEEP.

Now I haven’t been completely unproductive, the rules have gotten a fairly comprehensive re-write for clarification and another 11 cards (see this post’s image for 3 of em) have been Drawn, Inked, and scanned,  and 4 other cards have been painted and are ready to be placed.

This weekend I plan to at least paint those 11 and get them placed.   Oh and I also did an asset audit and made a nice excel sheet so I can see exactly how much I’ve got to go at all times. Total assets are 978mb as of now, stored in a subversion repository mirrored on a personal server with backups on 3 distinct physical locations.

Ok that’s It for today.

So it only took a little under 7 months, this weekend I finally wrapped up the behemoth that’s been hanging in the kitchen since January. The biggest change was wiping out the sun, which I spent so much time into getting perfect the first time around. However it just wasn’t working. Once the sun got off the canvas the remainder just fell into place.

While it was fun for the most part, I’m seriously gonna think twice before starting another canvas of that size. It just takes so long and so much effort you wind up just tired of it before you’re halfway, and then once part comes out brilliant, just as imagined, everything else seems sub-par. Thank god it wasn’t in oils though, or I’d just be starting the glazes.

Next up, a commissioned (I barter for exotic liquor) series of cute jungle animals for a cute little niece. Lions, gazelles, giraffes and a penguin(?) oh My!

Some basic concept art got created, and then I wandered off the project to illustrationland and then got mired down in EPIC project full of GRAND ideas etc etc and just essentially spent some time thinking myself to exhaustion.  Time to think less and do more.

I’ve made a list damnit!  With a great big list of bite size (a week or 2) tasks to do. I’m going to pick one and just do it and then simply rinse and repeat.   Theory being that this will decrease the amount of time spent bashing head on desk/wall/art table/sidewalk by not getting overwhelmed by any one thing or medium. 

Updates to follow.

David Gallo: Underwater astonishments – incredible underwater critters  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_gallo_shows_underwater_astonishments.html

Barry Schwartz on virtue & wisdom http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html

Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html

JJ Abrams and the mystery box. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html

Tim Brown: The powerful link between creativity and play  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html

Scott McCloud on understanding comics and visual narratives.  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html

Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html

 Jane Goodall:  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jane_goodall_on_what_separates_us_from_the_apes.html

Theo Jansen: The art of creating creatures- he makes amazing kinetic sculptures.  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_creatures.html

I really didn’t want to do this, which is why it probably took so long.  You see, I didn’t finish the background first… and you always start in the background and make your way closer to the viewer.   That way.. you don’t wind up having to paint over large swatches of the stuff you’ve already painted.  

Which I did.  Which sucks and isn’t a lot of fun knowing you’ve got to do something you were happy with all over again. 

I actually fudged over the planet area fairly well so there’s just a couple small things that are going to need reworking.. so in all reality it could have been much worse. 

So After that I started re-refining all the shade transitions on the gearwork and after I slopped a little shading on the planet guide beam thing I made up my mind to actually render out the gear works instead of the flat blue shapes.  

The base color for 2 of them done and some simple shading on the smaller one and a little detail and it’s a good stopping point.

Some behind the scenes work with putting everything in the level controlled by a manager object that keeps track of what’s going on and what to spawn next.

Off the top of my head:

• WSAD controls work.
• Money powerup (yellow dots)
• Magic powerup (blue Sigils)
• monsters drop money and score interfaces.
• New guis
• Basic fundamentals of waves are in place. 
• Object thresholds are in place so (in theory) it shouldnt crash due to too many simultanious spawns.

As always this is an alpha build, play with it at yer own risk.

 Graphics are primarily placeholders.. No there isn’t any sound yet. 

You can download it here www.swiftthought.com/BSDDoD/BSDD0D-alpha002.zip (3.94mb)

Feedback always appreciated.